Red Shoulder Hawk

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Tell me, how big is it?

So here's the thing: if I tell myself it's a big project, then guess what? It just gets bigger. Here's the basic thing I'm trying to do. I'm trying to create an experiential space, for urban/suburban folk to visit, to learn how to live within the earth's resource budget. The best way I can think of to do that, is to first walk the walk.

If the building were big enough to be a duplex, like so many of the divided up Victorians and Craftsmans we have here in Alameda, then half is my family's dwelling and half is the project space. The project space would host seminars in sustainable living, such as eliminating pesticides and herbicides from your garden, or supporting local farming co-ops, or driving on bio-fuels.

I want this so badly, to invent it and share it. I took all the puzzle pieces of my life, from wanting to build community to providing for my family, from using my persuasive art skills for good to refusing to buy into rampant consumerism, and this project was the result.

I can taste there's money to be made, in this model of reaching people. For example, what better way to sell a cork floor than to come live with one for a little while? So as advertising on the TV and in magazines gets more and more offensive, this would be inviting people to slow down, and check out products and ideas that honor the earth's carrying capacity, at their own sensory input capacity.

I'm starting to tell myself that this is not a giant project. It's a do-able project. And in fact, as I build community around me, as I host discussion salons, as I network with farmers and bio-diesel activists, I'm already "building" this project. I've got many of its intangibles already.

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Objective: Founding an investment and development company to acquire under-utilized investment properties of 2 to 6 units per building and retrofitting and rehabilitating them using sweat equity, green building and urban permacultural principles into "seeds" for eco-villages.

We combine expertise from the worlds of green building and architecture, relocalization, social activism and sustainability, rehabilitating distressed investment properties into cores for community-centered living, reshaping the urban environment and offering solutions to issues as small as affluenza to as large as global climate change.

Urban permaculture points the way to creating a secure, environmentally sound, and socially just housing model for owner-tenants who are yearning for affordable housing.